Chicago State University officials to face questions over enrollment figures

Lawmaker says he wants to know how CSU will address issue

July 28, 2011|By Jodi S. Cohen, Tribune reporter

Chicago State University officials will be asked at a state hearing next month to explain how they'll ensure that their enrollment and retention numbers won't be inflated with failing students.

Sen. Edward Maloney, D-Chicago, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said this week that he will question officials at the South Side public university about why they intentionally let failing students remain enrolled, an issue reported by the Tribune on Tuesday.

Chicago State has a policy that students with a grade-point average below 1.8 will be dismissed "for poor scholarship," but records obtained by the newspaper show students were allowed to continue registering for classes with GPAs as low as zero. Meanwhile, President Wayne Watson was touting increased retention and graduation rates as evidence that the institution was improving after years marked by widespread financial mismanagement, scathing audits and a failure to graduate students.

Watson, who took over in 2009, said he believes the practice started in 2007 as an intentional effort to boost the figures and then continued without the knowledge of campus leaders. He acknowledged that enrollment and retention numbers were slightly inflated as a result and said he ended the practice as soon as he learned about it in the spring.

Maloney said he is upset that it was going on and that students may have been receiving state and federal funds when they shouldn't have been in class.

"The affordability issue is becoming critical in this state," he said. "That is the tragedy of this situation. There are students who could be using the money more effectively toward graduation, toward their degree."

He said he is going to ask CSU officials about their plans to fix the problems and "then we should put in some timetable to judge the results."

The original purpose of the Aug. 10 hearing before the legislative audit commission was to review the university's most recent audit, which uncovered 41 problems from July 2009 to June 2010, including a failure to send tuition bills to students for several months.

"Between the audit findings and these other issues, it is going to take a massive effort here. You are almost starting over," Maloney said. He said Watson "is trying to do something, but the task is monumental."

Martha J. Kanter, U.S. undersecretary of education, said she hopes the incident was isolated.

"Hopefully they've fixed it, but it is about accountability," she said at an event in Tinley Park on Wednesday. "No one should be using state or federal funds for reasons for which they would not apply, so I was happy to read that the president had delved into it, that the problem has been addressed. I think there's some investigations going on, and we're looking forward to their positive outcomes."

Watson has said that it is taking time to root out all the problems and that he is often floored by what he discovers. A university "year in review" report cites new initiatives and achievements including a program for newly admitted students, more tutoring opportunities, a branding campaign to improve the university's visibility and a six-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time freshmen that jumped to 21 percent from 14 percent.

First-time, full-time students make up about 8 percent of the student body, which includes a large transfer population.

The school dismissed 298 undergraduates at the end of the spring term, the same time the Tribune began asking for data on student grades.

Ce Cole Dillon, the university's chief information officer, said failing students were not intentionally kept on the rolls.

"We are here to give students the opportunity for an education. We are here to do it with integrity and honesty and accountability," she said. "There is nothing wrong with finding ways to increase enrollment. … What we can't do is cheat to do it. What we won't do is cheat to do it."